Why does eating more calories = losing more weight?
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Down another pound this morning. Doing wood now. Picking up truck loads and dropping them in our back yard. Next I'll pull out the splitting maul and start splitting and stacking. September starts bear season. I shoot a 70 lb. longbow. Muscle mass and strength needed. However I've been shooting it now for 40 plus years. If you don't have muscles, you won't pull it back. I'm doing 1250 calories a day....mostly protein. I ride my bike, I kayak, and I lift wood. I used to lift weights, years ago when working in the hospital. So nothing new here. The only difference is I'm not running in the hospital. I'm retired and home. can't run anywhere anymore. oh well...its not stopping me any. I have plenty of energy, I sleep well (7-8 hours per night), I'm up early out in the garden. Today I'm soliciting businesses for the Lions. Off to a Lions meeting and barbeque tonight. I'm bringing desert....watermelon. Have a nice day!I got sent to a nutritionist 3 times for weight loss and each time, following their plan, I gained. Blew their minds!!
Thanks for sharing all this.
Just a question: do you weigh food and log everything you eat? Do you ensure you are using correct entries? In other words, what determines you are eating 1250 calories a day. I am hoping that you are underestimating your calorie intake, hence eating more than you realize, because you are pretty darned active.0 -
Well, eating more , I'm now at the original wt. that I started at two months ago. For SLL, I did the 1200 calorie thing two years ago and dropped 40 pounds and kept it off. I'm trying to do that same diet now, except it really isn't working. Do I WEIGH stuff? No. My Dr. put me on a 1200 cal a day diet and all I did was cut down on what I was eating....and read my packages for helping proportions and calculated it that way. Instead of three eggs and bacon and toast in the morning I'll do 2 egg whites, no toast or bacon. I do tossed salads at night or a GC120 shake. Nights are the biggest challenges as it depends on how active I am during the day. If I eat a good 600 0r 700 calorie lunch then supper is light. I dropped 8 pounds in two months, and in two day last week gained it back and I was even more active than I've ever been. Activity? It doesn't seem to work with me. Not unless I'm exercising daily, which I'm not. I used to wt lift years ago, and I used to have a ski machine and I did a 30 minute workout daily and I got THIN!! However that was a long time ago, when I had knees that worked. Now I struggle to walk to the next room. I brace my knees and work outside when I can. I'll struggle through this one way or the other, and if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. Its tough to do when they slow your metabolism down with heart drugs and expect you to be that trained monkey daily. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.
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battyfitch wrote: »I will never understand why people deliberately choose to eat less than MFP recommends. What's the point in signing up if you assume you know better than MFP's research and science-backed algorithms?
Sure, you'll lose weight on 1200 calories. But are those losses safe? Healthy? Sustainable? At some point you'll need to start eating more, and in my experience every time someone starts increasing their calories after doing a low calorie diet, they overindulge and gain it all back because they never changed their relationship with food.
This. 1200 is a scary number for a grown man. Your body requires MUCH more than that.....I'm 5'3, and I still lose eating over 1500 every day.0 -
No one mentions using a food scale at the low calories they are eating and are complaining here in this thread about not loosing weight. Not loosing weight = not in a calorie deficit.
Not to hijack, but this is exactly what I was talking about in another thread @RoxieDawn. I think people somehow convince themselves their calorie counting is accurate, then when the empirical evidence doesn't support them, they call the evidence into question, or look for some confounding variable to explain things -- acknowledging their original calculations are wrong is seemingly the very last resort for so many people, when it should be the one and only thing you look at.
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Well, eating more , I'm now at the original wt. that I started at two months ago. For SLL, I did the 1200 calorie thing two years ago and dropped 40 pounds and kept it off. I'm trying to do that same diet now, except it really isn't working. Do I WEIGH stuff? No. My Dr. put me on a 1200 cal a day diet and all I did was cut down on what I was eating....and read my packages for helping proportions and calculated it that way. Instead of three eggs and bacon and toast in the morning I'll do 2 egg whites, no toast or bacon. I do tossed salads at night or a GC120 shake. Nights are the biggest challenges as it depends on how active I am during the day. If I eat a good 600 0r 700 calorie lunch then supper is light. I dropped 8 pounds in two months, and in two day last week gained it back and I was even more active than I've ever been. Activity? It doesn't seem to work with me. Not unless I'm exercising daily, which I'm not. I used to wt lift years ago, and I used to have a ski machine and I did a 30 minute workout daily and I got THIN!! However that was a long time ago, when I had knees that worked. Now I struggle to walk to the next room. I brace my knees and work outside when I can. I'll struggle through this one way or the other, and if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. Its tough to do when they slow your metabolism down with heart drugs and expect you to be that trained monkey daily. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.
If you aren't weighing your food, you're guessing.4 -
I want to live in a world where losing three pounds a week is "maintenance."2
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OP: You're not weighing things, so you don't really know how much you're eating.
You've basically said you eat little or no processed food, yet you're getting your calorie info from packages. Huh?
As someone else pointed out, you've said you can't exercise -- then you talk about all the activity you do like splitting wood. Huh?
It's like you're 4 different people.6 -
No one mentions using a food scale at the low calories they are eating and are complaining here in this thread about not loosing weight. Not loosing weight = not in a calorie deficit.
Not to hijack, but this is exactly what I was talking about in another thread @RoxieDawn. I think people somehow convince themselves their calorie counting is accurate, then when the empirical evidence doesn't support them, they call the evidence into question, or look for some confounding variable to explain things -- acknowledging their original calculations are wrong is seemingly the very last resort for so many people, when it should be the one and only thing you look at.
No hijacking that I can see..
I went back through this again, and I finally see where OP admitted to not using a food scale to eat that 1200 calories his doctor put him on..
What I am confused about is OP's doctor's put him on medication, supposedly suggested 1200 calories (I would presume a medical weight loss???) as the best way to go for weight loss, but he is not weighing the food and logging it to see if he is actually eating 1200 calories.. Also some where in between his doctor's visits he has been told he had metabolic issues?
All of this warrants a new doctor and second and third opinions! I cannot see any doctor that suggests 1200 calories and not closely supervising that weight loss.
Here in MFP the tools provide an exact method to assure sucess, but one has to follow the method for it work.
edited to add: how can a person be more active than ever (per OP's last post) and then have trouble to make it to the next room in his home??
And dropping 8 pounds in two months and to gain all of that back in two days.. not humanly possible to gain fat like that back in two days..2 -
This site was suggested to me by another, but along with what he put in his mouth, he did RIGOROUS exercises daily. One year later he is a new man. I just don't want to look like a BLUBBERTUB sitting at the organ. That's all. I grew up on pasta. Loved it. would eat three bowls of it and pack on the wt. I don't eat it anymore for that reason. Breakfast this morning consists of three SMALL hard boiled eggs. THAT's IT. usually I do a packet of oatmeal and I'm good until noon. Wanna WEIGH IT? Its 160 calories! Three small eggs? 54 ea = 162 cal. Wanna weigh them? Usually my breakfast is around 300 cal. but today I'm going light as I'll be splitting wood for the morning. Lunchtime is different. I'll eat good for lunch. that will include a 6 oz. strip steak broiled with steamed cauliflower and steamed carrots. I'm looking forward to this already... SEE YA!!0
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This site was suggested to me by another, but along with what he put in his mouth, he did RIGOROUS exercises daily. One year later he is a new man. I just don't want to look like a BLUBBERTUB sitting at the organ. That's all. I grew up on pasta. Loved it. would eat three bowls of it and pack on the wt. I don't eat it anymore for that reason. Breakfast this morning consists of three SMALL hard boiled eggs. THAT's IT. usually I do a packet of oatmeal and I'm good until noon. Wanna WEIGH IT? Its 160 calories! Three small eggs? 54 ea = 162 cal. Wanna weigh them? Usually my breakfast is around 300 cal. but today I'm going light as I'll be splitting wood for the morning. Lunchtime is different. I'll eat good for lunch. that will include a 6 oz. strip steak broiled with steamed cauliflower and steamed carrots. I'm looking forward to this already... SEE YA!!
You have been given a great deal of good advice on how to take a proactive approach to help you lose weight. And if your doctors are steering you in the wrong direction, change doctors..
If you truly WANT changes.. the advice from @cgreen120288 are really great points.. It really is simple, you just need to WANT to do it..
And your friend that did all the exercise, is not the same as you. You are unique that you have your own limitations just like we all do in some form or another.. You can lose weight with NOT ONE LIFT of a finger in exercise.
Perhaps you will figure out that it really is easy to do..1 -
I bet you do most of the talking at your doctor's visit, too. You old dog.6
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You don't weigh your food. That's about all everyone needed to know!5
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Three small hard boiled eggs for breakfast cannot be good for your heart. Just remember that by not weighing your food and measuring what you drink you'll never know how many calories you ate when you used mayo, oil or butter in the pan, salad dressing, steak sauce, bbq sauce, or whiskey.1
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Not only that... your body will adapt to the 1200cal. per day and adapt. It will start to save the fat and eat at your muscle, and is very hard on your heart. I would say (like the others) go back to the 1500 cal, and try it for a while. I have learned that my body chooses to have like a base weight. I started at 183#. I have plateaued for a little bit in different increments. Like at 158#, 140#, and at 130#. So, I switch up my exercise and food choices. I have gone done in calories, but right away I noticed that if I ate more food or less food my weight would stay the same. I eat clean (3/4 of the time). I exercise (not this week due to neck issues). I also decided to change to the premium here so I could change my macro percentages. So I have high carb days and low carb days...and even kind of even days. I do think charting helps. By what I can gather.. you just need to keep tricking your body. Oh, yea... and I am a 53 year old... so if I can do it... you can to! Just have faith in yourself and give it time. Remember none of us gained weight in a day.
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Oh for petes sake, the guy doesnt want help, he just wants to talk about what a special snow flake he is!! Kind and clever people have given great advice and feedback, and its just proving to be a waste of time - save your breath for someone who really appreciates it.6
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A lot of the time when I hear "I'm not hungry, so I don't eat" is because your metabolism is at a stall. Do you eat enough protein?
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I think from reading your posts you really don't know if you are eating 1200 or 1500. If you would weigh you food and measure everything in grams or ounces instead of tablespoons or cups you would see a big difference. Without that all the talk in here is just wasted time.2
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